Potential
by Rosalind2013
Summary: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" One Shot.


**Hello, I'm Rosalind2013!**

 **I'm new to the Danny Phantom section, but definitely not new to fan fiction. I spend most of my time writing funny one-shots for Miraculous Ladybug, but I've had this DP one-shot sitting on my computer for about a year.**

 **It's about time I posted it!**

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 **Potential**

For as long as he could remember, Danny Fenton was transfixed by the world that stretched out above him. The sky was a part of everyday life, yet it remained so impossibly out of his reach.

As a child, he always wondered if clouds tasted like cotton candy, and was sorely disappointed when he was taught about the water cycle.

The night stars never disappointed him, though. They dotted the darkness of space like tiny beacons of hope, when in actuality; they were giant orbs of blazing gas. Dad liked to insist that the Milky Way was actually made of fudge.

Danny never argued with him; they both knew it wasn't.

The most interesting thing about space wasn't just the stars, or even the planets in the solar system. Danny dreamed of other galaxies. He wondered whether people lived there, and what their worlds would look like. He didn't believe in aliens; at least not in the traditional science-fiction sense.

Perhaps these other galaxies mirrored his own. Perhaps they did not.

It went without saying that Danny dreamed of becoming an astronaut. He wanted to walk on the moon, see the rings of Saturn, and discover new galaxies. He built model spacecrafts, looked up interactive simulations on his painfully slow desktop computer, and spent every night looking at the stars through his telescope.

While his parents continued to shamelessly endorse their field of Spectrology, they wholeheartedly supported Danny's interest in astronomy. They were people of science, after all.

Danny Fenton's dream followed him all the way to Freshman year of high school, where he spent most of his time trying to figure out the best way to get into the space program.

He knew he wasn't the best student, but he was determined to fulfill his dream, and he would do whatever it took to get there.

Danny never became an astronaut.

In an ironic twist of fate, he became the link between the land of the living and the dimension of the dead. Not quite dead, yet not quite alive; Danny teetered on the precipice of the impossible. His dreams of becoming an astronaut were not spared, so they too toed the line between life and death.

Unlike Danny's body, dreams were too rigid to survive on only half of a life. A half-dead dream might as well have been fully dead in the grand scheme of things. As his grades plummeted, so did his daydreams of exploring outer space.

Then, he discovered the Ghost Zone, a swirling green abyss riddled with countless doorways to various realms. It existed outside of space and time, and was mind-blowingly expansive in its reach.

Danny's dreams flared back to life, transformed by the ghost portal into something new. The Ghost Zone was uncharted territory, a place beyond the stretches of humankind's reach. Until now.

Sam and Tucker probably didn't understand Danny's interest in mapping the Ghost Zone. He reasoned that it was because he needed information on his enemies, but it was the draw of exploration that truly pulled him forward.

The realm of the dead was exciting, and seemingly as expansive as the reaches of outer space. There were times when he thought he could just disappear into the Zone, and spend a lifetime exploring and mapping its vast regions.

Danny knew that couldn't be; he was also tied to Amity Park in a way that he could only describe as a calling. Since the portal opened, ghosts had begun to seep into Amity Park, terrorizing its citizens and turning daily life on its head.

Danny didn't see his potential to be a hero until after he fought his first ghost.

In that moment, it felt as if everything had clicked into place. Granted, he struggled quite a bit before he captured it, but he won. He was able to protect his town; something that even his parents in all their hazmat-suit-clad glory were unable to do.

Danny quickly rose to the occasion, training to the best of his abilities and honing his ghost powers. Soon, he became quite a formidable opponent to the regular attackers of Amity Park.

At night, when he lay awake staring at the stars from the roof of Fenton Works, he often contemplated his strange life. He thought of the Ghost Portal accident and wondered what his future would be like.

If his experience with Clockwork had taught him anything, it was that his decisions really did matter. The only thing Danny knew for certain was that he would never become the monster he fought in front of the Nasty Burger.

He wondered whether he would become a full-time hero in the years after high school. Perhaps he would take up his parents' field of Spectrology. Maybe he would get a flexible job that allowed him to work around his unpredictable schedule.

Perhaps he would have to be the link between the human world and the ghost zone. Like a half-dead public relations expert; though perhaps he could joke that most people in public relations were half dead in some manner of speaking.

Whatever it was, Danny tried not to worry about it too much. As much as he'd liked having a plan when he was a child, there was something thrilling about having a blank canvas.

The possibilities were endless. Each choice was its own galaxy, and his options were as expansive as the far reaches of space. Danny rather liked the idea of an open plane to represent his future.

After all, it was just another exciting unknown to explore.


End file.
